Heads up, students! Next Wednesday, January 24th, the second-ever Youth Equity Summit will be held throughout the school, hoping to increase awareness and advocacy around student-led initiatives throughout the school.

Similar to last year’s Youth Equity Summit, on January 17th, classes will be 40 minutes long, and afterward, the 90-minute summit begins. Students will be able to choose one workshop out of a plethora of options, ranging from Farm Design to Ableism to many other topics. The summit is centered around equity, inclusion, and, in some cases, educating others about social justice issues. Different school organizations, such as Marine Conservation Club, BSU, and Pan Asian Club are running workshops centered around issues relevant to Cambridge. Many other clubs and students are running workshops focused on educating peers about social justice issues. To bring up a specific example, the Muslim Student Association is running a workshop set around educating students on Muslim genocides. Goals for this year’s summit are for students to “reflect on their own experiences, build empathy, and to feel empowered to make a change.” 

If students don’t sign up for a workshop, the school also offers a variety of “anchor activities” that Falcon Blocks can participate in as a group. The Youth Activism Panel, Culture Fair, Unified Basketball game, and others, are some examples. Falcon Blocks can choose two 45-minute anchor activities to participate in throughout the summit. The workshops and the activities end at 3 p.m., the same as a regular school day.

This year, the Youth Equity Summit committee made changes to the overall scheduling of the event and added many new workshops to the list. The success of last year’s Youth Equity Summit sparked a yearly tradition, and there’s hope that this year’s summit will be just as good as the last!